Joaquin Phoenix’s One-Man Cult of Depressive Method-Acting Vanity

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Zack Snyder is a pop-fantasy filmmaker who now has a fanboy cult around him. In the two decades since he made his feature directorial debut with the grainy unsettling 2004 reboot of “Dawn of the Dead,” Snyder’s flamboyant fusion of visual wizardry, technological fixation, and kick-ass spirit has made him, at least in some quarters (read: the Comic-Con and video-game demo), a creative hero for the Age of Escapism. Fans who grew up feasting on such Snyder extravaganzas as “300,” “Watchmen,” and “Sucker Punch” then saw his much-ballyhooed entrée into the DC comic-book sphere marked by ambitious but maligned misfires.

“Warhol After Warhol: Secrets, Lies, & Corruption in the Art World” (Pegasus Books, out now). “The two highly realistic Andy Warhol signatures were stamped facsimiles, not written in Warhol’s own hand.” Simon and Dorment teamed up to determine the true authentication process behind Warhol’s works.Ultimately, they uncovered what they believed was far-reaching fraud, leading to a years-long legal battle that cost millions and millions of dollars and featured a cast of characters that included a mob lawyer and a Russian oligarch.Simon, now 57, first moved in Warhol’s circles as a young man. He was a social Zelig who came to New York at age 15.

Emergency services raced to a small Scots town in the earlier hours of Saturday morning after receiving reports of a disturbance.

At 24, Edouard Philipponnat has already worked with powerhouse director Ridley Scott twice and his latest project Napoleon has him going toe to toe with the likes of Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby.

Mark Ruffalo is sharing stories while eating some hot wings!

Actress Suranne Jones has a history of playing powerhouse women, from Corrie’s Karen McDonald, to scorned Gemma Foster in Doctor Foster, and brave Anne Lister in Gentleman Jack. Now, Suranne is back for series two of BBC thriller Vigil and reprises her role as DCI Amy Silva. In series one, Amy was plunged into deep waters as she led a murder investigation on a submarine.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Every fan of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” (1971) loves the scene where Gene Wilder, as the mystical candy maker, takes his guests on a psychedelic tunnel ride, zooming through the bowels of the Chocolate Factory as he chants a little verse (“There’s no earthly way of knowing, which direction we are going…”), getting angrier and more hysterical by the second. Wilder’s Wonka was a sweetheart, but he had a hidden maniacal side. And in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Tim Burton’s majestically wacked 2005 remake, Johnny Depp, then at the apex of his movie stardom, went full Depp, playing Wonka like some louche vampiristic cross between Anna Wintour and Michael Jackson.

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. After debuting at Cannes Film Festival and then hitting theaters in October, Martin Scorsese‘s star-studded crime epic “Killers of the Flower Moon” will be available to purchase on digital and on-demand streaming beginning Tuesday, Dec. 5.

Strictly Come Dancing fans have shared their 'hope' after some thought a 'new dancer' had been hired. Things were a bit different on Sunday night (December 3) as the results show became a general chit-chat with the show's stars following an unexpected withdrawal from the BBC One dance contest.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “Christmas is not about money,” says Pepper (Jillian Bell), the passive-aggressive Christmas store elf in “Candy Cane Lane.” “Except that it is.” She could almost be describing Christmas movies. From the start, they’ve paired a celebration of the Christmas spirit, in all its enveloping toastiness, with a theme of raw economic desperation. You can trace this right back to the original Christmas movie — “A Christmas Carol,” and by that I don’t even mean the assorted film versions (though I grew up with them and especially loved the 1951 version with Alastair Sim) but the Charles Dickens novella, published in 1843, which essentially invented the modern Christmas.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In body-swap comedies, the acting is its own kind of brazen put-on fun. Adult actors get to channel their inner innocent kid; young actors get to channel their “serious” adult. And that’s why, ever since the original “Freaky Friday” (1976) brought this genre into being, it’s been marked by instances of true Hollywood artistry, like Tom Hanks’ classic performance in “Big” (though that wasn’t technically a swap comedy) or the lyrically funny bedlam that Jennifer Garner brought off in “13 Going on 30,” one of the best movies of its year.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic The Hollywood biographical drama — or biopic, to use the word that always makes it sound like a dental instrument — is enjoying its mega-moment. “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s three-hour epic about the father of the atomic bomb, proved that a story-of-a-life movie could be as big and coruscating as the cosmos; not so incidentally, it’s garnered Nolan the most ecstatic reviews of his career.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Saban Films has acquired U.S. rights to “Knox Goes Away,” a thriller about a contract killer with dementia that wasdirected by and stars Michael Keaton.

A lone woman was attacked by three men as she walked down the street in north Manchester.

May December, the title of Todd Haynes’s latest drama, reflects the director’s dance card for the year: having opened in Cannes, the Netflix title has been a festival favorite ever since, and will likely hang in there until voting closes after Christmas. Its two star names, Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, have been getting curious audiences through the doors, but what keeps the film playing in everyone’s minds is the moral maze of questions it poses.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Ridley Scott is shrugging off the negative reviews coming out of France for his new historical epic “Napoleon,” which stars Joaquin Phoenix as the infamous French emperor and Vanessa Kirby as his wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais. Reviews are all over the place for the biographical drama.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In “Dashing Through the Snow,” Lil Rel Howery has the off-the-cuff funk energy of a hustler who’s so quick that you believe his spiel before you’ve had the chance to outthink it. The whole issue of believing is key to the movie, since Howery plays Santa Claus — or, perhaps, a petty criminal who’s pretending to be Santa Claus. The character calls himself Nick, and he’s dressed as a variation on the old-school Victorian Santa: half-frame glasses, a coat festooned with gold buttons and paramilitary shoulder flaps, a vest of gold finery, along with a few token bits of street cool (pearl earring, two-tone beard, fingerless leather gloves).

Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara are stepping out for the night.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “When You Wish Upon a Star” is one of those songs, like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” that’s bigger than a song. It was first heard, of course, in the 1940 Walt Disney animated classic “Pinocchio,” where it was sung by Jiminy Cricket.

Joaquin Phoenix reportedly “walked out” of the premiere of his new film Napoleon earlier this week.The historical drama stars Joaquin Phoenix in the titular role as Napoleon Bonaparte, the military mastermind and Emperor of France. It spans 32 years from the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 to Napoleon’s death on St Helena in 1821, and explores significant battles as well as the romantic turmoil with his wife Joséphine de Beauharnais.Phoenix was spotted walking out of the film’s premiere in Paris on Tuesday (November 14) before it started.